Free showing of Film Fest winners tonight

The Hyart Film Festival is offering a free showing of winning films from last year’s film festival on Thursday night, at 7 p.m., at the Hyart Theatre in Lovell.

“The idea is to show people what they may have missed last year, and to get people excited about the new films we will be showing at this year’s festival,” said Hyart Film Festival organizer Jason Zeller.

Seven films will be shown. The first is “Buon Giono Sayonara,” an uplifting film about an Italian speaking man and a Japanese speaking woman who spend an afternoon together. Next up is one of Zeller’s personal favorites, “Snow Day,” which is an animated film about a snowman who comes to life. Then “Tecopolis,” a film created in stop-motion style animation. Next up is “Escape of the Gingerbread Man,” a beautifully animated film made to delight both children and adults. Last year’s People’s Choice winner, “The Secret Friend,” a bittersweet film about loneliness will be next in the line-up of relatively short films. The last two films that will be shown are “bit edgy” according to Zeller and include “Cyburbia,” a film about people with communication devices embedded in their heads, and last year’s horror film category winner, “An Evening with my Comatose Mother.”

Zeller said the last two films have content that parents may not find suitable for children and it is up to the “discretion” of parents to make the decision of whether or not they want their children to see those films. He plans to have an on-screen warning appear before the films are shown, so that parents who may not find the content suitable for their children will have the opportunity to remove their children from the theatre. The on-screen warning also gives a heads-up to adults who may not like to watch films with that content.

Zeller said that the free showing is a “warm-up” for this year’s festival, which will be held Aug. 9-11 at the historic Hyart Theatre, in downtown Lovell. This will be the third year for the festival, which will showcase films carefully selected by a committee from submissions in the drama, comedy, action comedy, animation, music video, science fiction, horror and “mockumentary” genres. Zeller describes the “mockumentary” genre as a “spoof presented in a documentary style format with a humorous twist.”

The festival does not accept films with nudity, bad language, especially the “f-word” or “super-gory” violence. Zeller hopes that by limiting this content, the festival will remain, for the most part, a “family-friendly” event.